Such seems to be the case with the theory of humanitarianism. It bases itself upon science, upon experience, and rules out communion with God as not being a scientific fact or a fact of experience at all. Based upon science, it is a theory which seeks amongst other things to assign to religion its place in the evolution of humanity. According to the theory, the day of religion is over, its part played out, its function in the evolution of humanity discharged. According to this theory, three stages may be discerned in the evolution of humanity when we regard man as a moral being, as an ethical consciousness. Those three stages may be characterised first as custom, next religion, and finally humanitarianism.
By the theory, in the first stage--that of custom--the spirits to whom cult is paid are vindictive. In the second stage--that of religion--man, having attained to a higher morality, credits his gods with that higher morality. In the third stage--that of humanitarianism--he finds that the gods are but lay figures on which the robes of righteousness have been displayed that man alone can wear--when he is perfect. He is not yet perfect. If he were, the evolution of humanity { 245} would be attained--whereas at present it is as yet in process. The end of evolution is not yet attained: it is to establish, in some future generation, a perfect humanity. For that end we must work; to it we may know that, as a matter of scientific evolution, we are working. On it, we may be satisfied, man will not enter in our generation.
Now this theory of the evolution of humanity, and of the place religion takes in that evolution, is in essential harmony with the scientific treatment of the evolution theory, inasmuch as it treats of the individual solely as an instrument to something other than himself, as a means of producing a state of humanity to which he will not belong. But if the assumption that the individual is always a means and never an end in himself be false, then a theory of the evolution of man (as an ethical consciousness) which is based on that wrong assumption will itself be wrong. If each individual is an end, as valuable and as important as any other individual; if each counts for one and not less than any one other,--then his end and his good cannot lie in the perfection of some future generation. In that case, his end would be one that _ex hypothesi_ he could never enjoy, a rest into which he could never enter; { 246} and consequently it would be an irrational end, and could not serve as a basis for a rationalist theory of ethics. Man's object (to be a rational object) must have reference to a society of which he may be a member. The realisation of his object, therefore, cannot be referred to a stage of society yet to come, on earth, after he is dead,--a society of which he, whether dead or annihilated, could not be a member. If, then, the individual's object is to be a rational object, as the humanitarian or rationalist assumes, then that end must be one in which he can share; and therefore cannot be in this world. Nor can that end be attained by doing man's will--for man's will may be evil, and regress as well as progress is a fact in the evolution of humanity; its attainment, therefore, must be effected by doing God's will.